What is the Honors Institute?
What is the significance of this year's topic?
Who is Dr. Oliver Sacks?

How is Dr. Sacks's address linked to the Honors
Institute?
What will happen at the Institute Symposium?
How does the Honors Institute affect the Miami Valley?
What is the location and date of Dr. Sacks's keynote
address?
What is the location and date of the Honors Institute
Symposium?
What is the Honors Institute?
The Honors Institute is a hybrid, multi-track learning
experience that culminates in a provocative community event. Its
purpose is to prepare Honors students to think beyond their
academic training and to make it a habit of incorporating
this training into larger, humanistic considerations of
the common good. Focusing each year on a different contemporary
intellectual issue of ethical importance, the Institute
consists of:
- two interdisciplinary seminars for WSU Honors Program
students on the Honors Institute's annual topic.
- a service learning project for students to work with
community organizations on projects related to the annual
Honors Institute topic.
- a keynote address, free and open to the public, delivered
by a figure of national prominence.
- a day-long symposium, free and open to the public,
consisting of small, intensive discussion sessions run
by regional experts and humanities scholars.
What is the significance of this year's topic?
In recent decades, the traditional idea of a self, a mind,
or a soul has been challenged by developments in neuroscience.
According to neuroscience proponents, the mind is nothing
more than the activity of the brain understood in terms
of its information-processing activities. But do these
recent developments give us the last word on our sense
of ourselves as conscious creatures? Honors Institute
participants will be invited to engage in questions that
arise from new research into the human brain. These questions
include:
- What does it mean to equate moods, emotions, thoughts,
and convictions with the mechanical activity of neurons
in specific regions of the brain?
- What does such an equation have to say about the latitude
for and definition of human self-determination, creativity,
and freedom?
- How does this new approach to human consciousness change
our conception of the roles that history, memory, imagination,
the unconscious, the soul, and the question of God play
in the human search for meaning?
- How has it changed traditional questions concerning
the meaning of human life?
- Is there a significant difference between the female
and male brain?
- How does this new approach to consciousness change
or renew our sense of moral responsibility?
- What is the relationship between the psychical and
the physical?
Who is Dr. Oliver Sacks?
Perhaps best known for his book The Man Who Mistook
His Wife for a Hat, Dr. Sacks is concerned above
all with the ways in which individuals survive and adapt
to different neurological diseases and conditions. Equally
interested in diseases and people, theory and drama,
science and romance, Dr. Sacks has made it his task to "restore
the human subject at the centre -- the suffering,
afflicted, fighting human subject. . . . ." His
best-selling books, widely used in university humanities
courses, have served as the inspiration for artists working
in forms as varied as poetry, essay, documentary, drama,
painting, dance, cinema and fiction. His book Awakenings (1973)
became a play and later a movie by the same name (1990),
starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams.
How is Dr. Sacks's address linked to the Honors
Institute?
The Institute Address is the keynote event for the Institute
Symposium. In his March 9 address, Dr. Sacks will consider
the elusive act of creativity and the ways it can be nurtured.
Creativity involves the power to originate, to break away
from the existing ways of looking at things, to move freely
in the realm of the imagination, to create and recreate
worlds fully in one's mind -- with a critical inner
eye. Creativity has to do with the inner life -- with
the flow of new ideas and strong feelings.
What will happen at the Institute Symposium?
The Institute Symposium on March 10, 2006, is free and
open to the public. It will further explore the theme of
creativity and the brain in three separate, complementary
tracks of inquiry: liberal arts, performing arts, and the
medical perspective. Regional scholars and community representatives
will make presentations on topics such as gender and the
brain, the creative impulse, and the meaning of consciousness.
Community organizations will also offer informational tables
and sessions throughout the day. The symposium will begin
with an opening continental breakfast, proceed to concurrent
sessions, followed by lunch for all participants, and another
session of concurrent workshops. Online registration for
the symposium will be available starting in early January 2006.
How does the Honors Institute affect the Miami Valley?
The Wright State University Honors Institute was created
to respond to a number of needs, the most salient being
the importance of producing graduates who are creatively
and civically engaged in their community -- who exercise
what philosopher Martha Nussbaum calls a "civic imagination." The
population of Dayton has declined steadily in recent years,
most notably since 2000. Ohio overall has had difficulty
retaining college-educated citizens and is lagging behind
the nation in what is now referred to as a "knowledge
economy." Unlike Ohio's former manufacturing
economy, the "knowledge economy" requires a
highly educated, well-rounded, and community-focused citizenry.
According to Richard Florida, whose book The Rise
of the Creative Class has influenced urban planning
all over the nation (most locally in Dayton's Tech
Town run by Citywide Development Corporation), "the
key to regional growth lies not in reducing the costs of
doing business but in endowments of highly educated and
productive people." It is in this context that the
WSU Honors Program has decided to inaugurate the Honors
Institute.
What is the location and date of Dr. Sacks's
keynote address?
Dr. Sacks's keynote address will be held on Thursday,
March, 9, 2006, at 7:00 p.m. in the Apollo Room of the
Student Union on the Wright State University Main campus
in Dayton, Ohio. No ticket is required for Dr. Sacks's
address.
What is the location and date of the Honors Institute
Symposium?
The Honors Institute Symposium will be held on Friday,
March, 10, 2006, from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. in the WSU
Student Union. Lunch will be provided.
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